We visited Goose Island State Park and the famous Big Tree. I must say it was a rather sad visit… It is said to be 1000 years old, but clearly the tree is not well and I think has declined since the last time we went there when I don’t remember thinking it looked ill. It doesn’t appear to have the normal amount of foliage. Over the years many branches have been cut off, and you can see the previously long branch on the left has been recently cut. So visit the Big Tree while you stlil can!

This is a basketflower (Centaurea americana). The bud is a ball that looks like a basket, this is the bloom, and the seedpod is also interesting. The petals of the basketflower are delicate and flow around and behave like untamed human hair in the wind. At first glance they look like thistles, but they are not.

I like to photograph flowers, especially features that I think people may not have noticed. The small flowers are easy to miss and difficult to photograph. I often find things after the fact that I didn’t notice, like a tiny spider. In this case I’m not sure if I noticed the water droplets.

Allium, onion/garlic family. This was taken at Rio Bonito, along the Blanco River, during Wimberley Arts Fest. Some flowers wow us by growing in masses, like fields of bluebonnets or fields of blanket flowers. Others are not so spectacular in the large, but very beautiful in their details. There are at least two bugs in this photograph, which of course I did not see when I was taking the picture.